“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou
I've been thinking about this quote a lot lately. When I first started at my current agency, one of the people who hired me left to start a position in the private sector. She gave me this quote on a magnet, which I always thought was a bit strange since we barely knew each other. But it stuck with me, and recently I think I've started to fully understand it.
When I was finishing my first master's, there were days when I felt like hell. A few months into the program, my coworker announced that she was going to be retiring soon. Suddenly, not only was I pursuing a very vigorous program, but I was facing running an office, and supporting eleven attorneys, all by myself. And with it being a state government position, I knew it would be a long time before we'd be able to hire someone else. It was daunting. Coupled with that, I had been struggling with my master's program, especially since I had back-to-back classes requiring group work, and my introverted self was tired.
At one point, I had eight months of classes with no breaks, and the classes were each eight weeks long. So from January until August, I was constantly writing papers, working on projects, and trying to coordinate schedules with other busy adults. It was a nightmare, and there were days I considered quitting.
It was July, and I had just started another new class that had a huge group project. I was already dreading it, but first, we had a slightly smaller project to complete with a group of about five people. I have never considered myself a leader, but my grades in grad school really mattered to me, so I forced myself into a role way outside of my comfort zone. After reading the syllabus for this class, I heaved a heavy sigh, gathered my strength, and went to work coordinating the first meeting. The meetings actually went pretty well, and I had some hope that things might be different in this class. But that's not what stuck with me. One kind soul lightened my mood tremendously with an offhand joke he probably doesn't even remember, and then later on gave me a shout out in a discussion question.
I didn't realize how much I just needed this one small act of kindness when my life was starting to feel out of control. Don't get me wrong, my husband was trying to be supportive, and the attorneys I worked for strived to make sure I knew how appreciated I was, but for reasons I can't explain, his comments buoyed my mood. It wasn't so much what he said, but it was, as the quote above notes, how he made me feel. Seen. Respected. I never forgot that experience, and when I had the chance to meet him in person, I thought maybe I'd take the time to thank him. I lost my nerve because I knew it would be weird and awkward. It was unlikely he would even remember what he said. And then he and his wife paid me another kindness when I was alone at one of the events before graduation. They sat and talked to me as we waited for the bus to take us back to the metro and then I think we even rode the metro together for part of the way. I hate traveling on public transportation, but especially at night, and I appreciated not having to travel that whole way alone.
We recently reconnected over writing as he is trying to get published as well, and my initial offer to be a beta reader has morphed into me helping him find comps and doing essentially a developmental edit for him. He keeps telling me he doesn't know how to thank me, but he doesn't have to, because this is my thank you to him.
